Slay Your Traffic Tickets!

Greg Slaughter

The ‘Civil’ Traffic Ticket – “It ain’t no crime” …at least that’s what the state claims!

"For
over sixty years the U.S. Supreme Court avoided trekking through the constitutional
minefield accumulated around the long standing practice of police stopping
and temporarily seizing people at ‘civil’ traffic stops."

It’s
a nice day and you are traveling down the road in your automobile listening
to one of your favorite tunes playing on your car stereo when, a frenzied
display of psychotropic red and blue pulsating lights appear suddenly
in your rearview mirror. It’s a traffic cop! Like a warring bird
of prey, he has swooped down upon you at lightning speed from out of nowhere
and now he has you hopelessly locked firmly in his clutches.

Millions
of Americans each year, traveling upon our nation’s highways and
streets, share in a similar unpleasant experience of getting a traffic
ticket. In most states, minor traffic offenses are legally classified
as infractions. Infractions are considered legally to be ‘petty
offenses’ of the law and not a crime. The commission of an infraction
is classified as a non-criminal act and, therefore, the infraction is
a ‘civil’ breach of the law.

There
is little civil about the experience of being chased down like a common
criminal by an armed police officer and handed a civil traffic ticket.
Most people find the experience to be very unnerving, if not downright
frightening. The civil traffic stop is made infinitely more tyrannous
in light of the fact that the victim of the cop’s assault committed
no crime.

The
Fourth Amendment was designed to protect us against unreasonable search
and seizures, requiring police to first have probable cause.
Although probable cause was not defined by the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme
Court has long held that probable cause must include a criminal act to
warrant seizure, or arrest. In Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968)
the U.S. Supreme Court held that police may briefly detain a person if
they have a reasonable suspicion that the person has committed, is committing,
or is about to commit a crime.

Being
that the Supreme Court’s litmus test for probable cause has historically
required the element of a crime to be associate with reasonable cause
for a seizure, how then is it possible that a traffic stop (seizure) for
a non criminal civil infraction not to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment?

In
1967, the Supreme Court cracked open the door to provide legal sanction
to what police officers were already doing around the country in violating
the Fourth Amendment (performing traffic stop seizures for non-criminal
civil infractions). In Delaware v. Prouse, 440, U.S. 648 (1967)
the Supreme Court ruled, “The permissibility of a particular law
enforcement practice is judged by balancing its intrusion on the individual's
Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate
governmental interests.” [writer emphases added]

For
over sixty years the U.S. Supreme Court avoided trekking through the constitutional
minefield accumulated around the long standing practice of police stopping
and temporarily seizing people at ‘civil’ traffic stops. Civil
traffic stops (seizures) were unquestionably at odds with people’s
Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable seizures. The Supreme
Court’s refusal to take the lead on the constitutional issue of
the civil traffic stop left the state courts twisting in the wind of tyrannous
constitutional construction and clamoring for a clear constitutional path
they could take to safely traverse around the Fourth Amendment roadblock
regarding the civil traffic stop and seizure.

The
state courts have long and desperately sought the U.S. Supreme Court’s
assistance in constitutionally ‘legitimizing’ (tweaking the
Constitution) the six decade practice by police officers of seizing people
for civil traffic offenses. The state courts had no way of neatly disposing
of the highly problematic constitutional requirement that the U.S. Supreme
Court had saddled them with. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that probable
cause for a temporary seizure required a crime and the civil traffic stop
was not a crime.

In
1996 the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Whren v. United States,
517 U.S. 806 addressed head on the question of whether or not the civil
traffic stop (seizure) violates a person’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Acquiescing to the state courts’ demands, the Court provided the
state courts with exactly what they had long sought, ruling; “As
a general matter, the decision to stop an automobile is reasonable where
the police have probable cause to believe that a
traffic violation has occurred.” [writer emphases added]

Politicians
are well known for their talent to spin things. ‘Spinning’
is the ability to make things appear to be something that they are not.
However, this talent is not limited only to politicians. Supreme Court
justices are also very practiced in the art of spinning. Justices of the
Supreme Court are lawyers, and lawyers practice a form of spinning known
as ‘legal word art’. This form of spinning is created by transforming
common words into technical legal jargon with hidden meanings.

The
Supreme Court in the Whren case applied a hefty dose of good ol’
spin doctoring, as the politicians like to say, to make it appear as if
the civil traffic stop was not an assault on our Fourth Amendment protection
against unreasonable seizure. The Court in Whren capitalized on the use
of one tiny, common, ordinary word - a word everyone uses and believes
that they know the meaning of – ‘traffic.’

Traffic;
the flow of vehicles and pedestrians along public right of ways. True?
Yes, quite true when the word traffic is used in its ordinary sense, but
not true when the word traffic is used in its legal sense. The word traffic
used in its legal sense means an activity involving commerce — transportation
of goods and people for profit as revealed in the following definition
for the word ‘commerce’ under U.S. Code, Title 42, 21, VI,
§ 2000e (g). The term “commerce” means trade, traffic,
commerce, transportation, transmission…” [writer emphases
added]

A
little more than a century ago, America had less tyrannous courts. The
following 1898 Illinois Supreme Court ruling regarding the licensing of
motorized methods of private transport of people not engaged in traffic
is great proof of how at least one state supreme court followed the Constitution
back then.

“The
license is designed to operate upon those who hold themselves out as common
carriers, and a license may be exacted from such as a proper exercise
of police power; but no reason exists why it should be applied to the
owners of private vehicles, used for their individual use exclusively,
in their own business, or for their own pleasure, as a means of locomotion.”
City of Chicago v. Collins et al., Supreme Court of Illinois.
175 Ill. 445, 51 N.E. 907 (Oct. 24, 1898).

The
Illinois Supreme Court in 1898 held firm to the constitutional fact that
the states have the power to regulate, license, and tax only those persons
engaged in the activity of commerce related to the transport
of people and goods upon the public right of ways.

Technically,
the Supreme Court did not assail our Fourth Amendment protection against
unreasonable seizure. Stopping and temporarily seizing a person engaged
in traffic (an activity in commerce) does not per se violate their constitutional
rights under the Fourth Amendment. The constitution grants states the
right to regulate profit making activities in commerce upon the public
right of ways.

In
a realest or truest sense, the Supreme Court walloped our Fourth Amendment
rights smack between the eyes with Whren (which was the Court’s
intention from the get go). The states had long been pressuring the Supreme
Court for a ruling such as this. They desperately needed to justify sixty
plus years of doing what is not justifiable – their long practice
of seizing people not in engaged in commerce at so called civil traffic
stops.

Had
Whren raised the issue about his not being engaged in commerce and a regulated
activity, at the time of his trial, then in all likelihood the Supreme
Court would have passed on hearing his case. The Court would have just
waited patiently for another case to come along possessing the elements
necessary to rule in the same manner as the Court had done in the Whren
case.

Traffic
boils down to money, power, and control. Traffic tickets are a multi-billion
dollar bonanza for state and local governments. Profit making activities
allows the government to regulate, license, and tax people under the constitution.
The state traps people into traffic in much the same manner as it does
regarding the Income Tax – the government just pretends that we
all are engaged in a profit making activity.

The
Supreme Court acted on the pretense that Whren was engaged in a profit
making activity upon the public right of way and therefore, the state
had the power to regulate his activity (driving or being in commerce).
The police have the right to regulate traffic and, therefore, can constitutionally
temporarily seize a person engaged in commerce to issue them a traffic
ticket for a civil breach of the state’s driver’s license
compact.

The
state’s so called driver’s license compact is written for
those engaged in commerce. However this fact is cleverly disguised and
hidden from people by the lawyers who write the laws using the “spin
doctoring” or ‘legal word art.’

Your
possessing a driver’s license is not proof or evidence that you
are engaged in traffic. You can have a driver’s license and your
car can be registered and this does not prevent you from lawfully traveling
in your private constitutionally unregulated capacity upon the public
right of ways. It’s the activity of engaging in commerce that grants
the states the right to regulate traffic and nothing in the Constitution
grants the states the right to regulate the people’s right to travel.
The right to travel is not and cannot be made a regulated activity. Therefore,
the temporary seizure by a police officer at the time of a traffic stop
is unquestionably unconstitutional.

Slay
your traffic ticket withTicket
Slayer!

Ticket
Slayer has a National Traffic Dismissal Rate of 85% — 92% in California